Tales of Xillia 2 Preview

Tales of Xillia was a godsend for Japanese role-playing game fans everywhere. It included many of the features these passionate followers crave, and they’re hoping to get another gem when the sequel arrives. It will launch in North America for the PlayStation 3 some time later this year and ideally, those fans will receive something familiar yet refreshing. The familiar part is a given, as the developers don’t wish to alienate their fanbase, but new gameplay elements will make an appearance. Whether or not they’re improvements…well, that’ll be up to you.

The story is more surreal this time around, which could prove immensely interesting. See, there are parallel universes that are expanding rapidly and dangerously, thus creating a divergent timeline. Your job is to entire these individual pocket universes, locate the cause of the problem, and eliminate it. Of course, what you’re essentially doing is destroying other worlds just to save your own, a moral dilemma the characters face throughout the adventure. It certainly sounds promising but whenever you start fiddling around with the concepts of time and space, things can get a little muddled.

Here’s hoping the writers produce a script that isn’t too ridiculously transparent, and manages to simultaneously question and inspire. As for combat, franchise fans will recognize the battle mechanic, but there are a host of additions and tweaks. For instance, enemies will now have weapon weaknesses (in the first game, they only had magical weaknesses). This means that some foes will be more resistant to swords than hammers and vice versa, so you’ll have to continually assess your opponents. The cool part is that the protagonist, Ludger, can actually switch weapons on the fly when engaged in battle.

Unfortunately, the other characters can’t, which means Ludger may be your only salvation if you’re ill-equipped for a particular encounter. This may have a direct impact on the overall balance, as players may see no benefit to using any other character. Don’t forget that Ludger is also the only fighter that can use the new “limit-break” style setup. Once the gauge fills, Ludger transforms into something completely insane and he deals crazy damage, which ought to come in handy for tougher enemies. Still, once again, this begs the question: “Why would we ever use any other character in combat?”

Maybe they’ll have individual skills and abilities we’ll want to access manually, I don’t know. I know it’ll be important to forge solid relationships with your allies; this can be accomplished by making the right choices during dialogue sequences. The freedom of choice can be found in just about every video game these days, and hardcore RPG fans usually appreciate the option. That being said, JRPG fanatics are often very traditional and if too many choices are deemed superfluous, it will feel like an unnecessary and tacked-on feature. Still, I’d rather be optimistic.

One last feature to mention: At the start of the game, you’re saddled with a $20 million debt that you must pay off. After a set amount of time passes, you need to ante up, so you need to save your bucks. Depending on how the developers approach this, it could end up being a worthwhile addition to the adventure, or it could wind up being outrageously annoying; i.e., grinding and drudgery just to earn money that’s going to be taken away, anyway. This all being said, I applaud new ideas because without ‘em, we’ll get the legions of cynics going, “I’ve already played this before!”

Tales of Xillia won our illustrious Role-Playing Game of the Year in 2013. Will the sequel have a shot at the title…?

I'm talking about Tales of Xillia. I haven't played it because I don't have a lot of time. First I need to work on a few of my uncompleted games before I tackle a JRPG of this magnitude. It will help me stay focused on it and get more enjoyment out of it.

What's the completion average time for Tales of Xillia?

I think it was you, World, who suggested this game and so I bought it because I was feeling like playing a JRPG.

oh lol I thought you literally meant like the PS1 game. Yeah I probably did recommend it. It's gonna be around 60 hours completion time. Don't despair though, it's very user friendly and you can take your sweet time going all over the world doing whatever you want as you advance the story. It doesn't lock you into like 4 hour play sessions or anything, I sometimes just did bits and pieces at a time.

I am really looking forward to The Withcher 3 and Shadow of Mordor. For some reason, after playing Skyrim, I crave some J/RPG's. I wasn't a big fan of them. I didn't really play J/RPG's other than Pokemon, and maybe a few games such as Mass Effect which is a 3rd person shooter with RPG elements, amirite?

Yeah I'll be ready whenever this comes, loved Xillia 1. Tomorrow Tales of Symphonia HD collection comes to my door so hopefully I can play on Friday. That's 2 games so maybe when I'm done with them Xillia 2 will be out.

Plus I just bought Enchanted Arms on a lark, kinda neat and I'm glad it has Japanese voices.

I finish a vast majority of the games I start playing. That way when I get around to playing another game its price has dropped. I have friends that buy everything brand new Day1 and a year later the game is still in the plastic because of the overflow. That's a waste of money.

That's why I'm gonna try to control myself this generation. Instead of having game in plastic though I started them up out of excitement, wasn't blown away, and then shelved them until months went by. Wasn't necessary.

“Why would we ever use any other character in combat?” Fairly normal in Tales games, from what I can tell. Graces F is the only one I've played that felt like all the characters were meant for the player to use.

I liked to use all six in Xillia because they had their specific abilities especially Milla, Alvin and Rowen. Even when you weren't directly controlling them you were linked to one which meant you used them! Now that I think about it, it was pretty genius.

Wow Milla made it an action game, Alvin felt like a true tank and Rowen was the ultimate ranger forrealz that old dog was the truth with his arcane.

I guess that makes us opposites... and rivals.//love

//Graces is good too. 7500 Eleth so far, almost there. I hate Cheria and Pascal. Malik and Richard's speed-casts feel much more satisfying with their A-Artes.

I mostly used Asbel too, but whenever I tried someone else it felt like they'd been well designed to keep the player engaged without loosing out on the action. Unlike say, using Elize in Xillia or Jade in Abyss.

It's not like you can't use any other characters in the other games, but there are always a couple that are obviously the one's the devs meant for you to use and at least one or two that are just better left to the AI.